How to Apply Android Icon Packs & Themes – Quick Guide

If you’re looking for instructions on how to apply themes, you’re in the right place. I made this little How-To guide for applying icon packs for newcomers to the Android theme world. Here are the steps involved.

Grab a launcher

If your stock launcher doesn’t support icon packs, you’ll need a third-party launcher. Launchers are key to unlocking a ton of personalization tweaks that you don’t get with your stock interface. I recommend Nova Launcher, but there are a plethora of great ones and it’s hard to go wrong with any of the popular launchers on the play store.

If you want to keep your stock launcher, apps like Awesome Icons and Unicon can apply icons by changing your system files without needing a 3rd party launcher.

4. Look for Icon pack or theme options. In Nova, it’s called “Icon Theme.” This section can take a few seconds to load depending on your device.

5. Choose from your installed themes!

That’s it!

If you have any questions feel free to email me at natewren@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to answer them. If you’d like to see how to change your status bar and navigation bar icon colors keep reading!

How to Manually Edit an Icon

In some cases, you may want to edit an icon’s appearance, either because there’s an alternative version you prefer, or because the icon hasn’t been themed by the developer. To manually edit a single icon follow these steps:

1. Press + hold on the icon you want to edit. Most launchers give you an “edit” popup with options for that icon. For this example, I’m using Nova Launcher.

2. Tap the “Edit” option that pops up

3. Tap the current icon to edit its appearance.

4. Choose a theme to pick a new icon. This section can take a few seconds to load depending on your device.

5. Choose a replacement in the list of icons. You can also use the arrow icon on the top right to open the selected icon pack app to search for a specific icon. This feature is not available in all launchers. If your favorite launcher doesn’t have this feature, I recommend asking the developers to implement it, or try Nova launcher for the most customization options.

6. If your launcher supports it, you can directly open the icon pack “Icons” section from the previous icon picker screen to search for the icon by name. Select your icon here once you’ve found it.

7. Tap “Done” to save your changes.

8. The new icon will now be applied to your home screen! Note that some launchers let you edit icons for your app drawer as well. The same steps are involved for changing app drawer icons.

Changing Your Status Bar & Nav Bar Icons

This part is a little trickier because your device needs to be rooted. If you’ve already got a rooted phone, congrats, you’re halfway there.

1. Root your device

Already rooted? Great. Need to root your device? Head over to http://www.xda-developers.com/, find your device’s page and read everything you can. Careful, though. Rooting voids your warranty and you can brick your phone if you do it wrong and nobody wants that.

2. Install Xposed Module Repository

Latest version here. Xposed has it’s own set of instructions for installing so make sure you check those out before installing.

3. Install Gravity Box via Xposed

Search for “gravitybox” and choose your version of android. Install the latest version and reboot your device.

4. Change Status Bar & Nav bar colors in Gravity Box

When you open gravity box you’ll see settings for different sections of your phone. All of these offer little tweaks that are fun to play around with but we’re interested in the Status Bar and Nav Bar tweaks.

Both of these are applied roughly the same way. Go to your status bar settings in gravity box and choose Statusbar colors.

Here, you can change the icon color to whatever you want. I’m using 1aff73 to match Pip-Tec Green. For reference, Amber is ffce53 and Blue: 03e7ff.